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After making the cute outfit for niece Grace’s 2nd birthday the other day (she and her mum loved it but it was a bit big - she has plenty of growing room!) I had to make one for my Emma too.

She already had a cream sweatshirt that matched so I made her a removable flower pin to go on the top.

It was very easy - just a few circles of the cord stacked onto some pink felt to make it a bit stiffer, then some stitching from edge to edge. I sewed a stash button to the front and a brooch pin to the back of it and pinned it on. Voila! It can also be pinned to the skirt itself as shown below.

You might also remember the ruffles I recently added to some too-short jeans of Emma’s - well, on the weekend I made her a white sweatshirt with ruffles to match!

I also manhandled some of the red ricrac quilt binding into a flower shape and sewed it onto the top with a red button. She also wanted a red flower stalk - it looks a bit like it could be a balloon on a string now.

The kids are all on school holidays for the next two weeks. Today, I took them to see the new Shrek movie - it was good!  On the weekend my mum and I took them to the Winter Wonderland that is here for the hols - it was great fun! We went on the Cha Cha ride, crashed the dodgem cars a whole lot, threw snowballs, and more.  I will be there working in the kid’s Chill Out Zone (aka craft area) for a couple of days next week actually. It’s still on in Melbourne for another week too.

Oh, and I had a really good dream involving Mark Harmon (Gibbs from NCIS) last night.  Despite thinking he is very sexy, I don’t generally dream about people in that way, but I did enjoy this dream!   TMI? 

Today my little niece Grace turns two. I completed her present this afternoon and dropped it off at her house, ready for her to wear out to the family dinner at a local restaurant tonight. I am SO happy with how this turned out.

The three fabrics for the skirt are from rolls in my stash (they are all soft corduroy) and the fabric for the top is an oatmeal knit that I picked up op-shopping (thrifting) recently. I have been having quite good luck with picking up fabric recently. You probably can’t see it in the photo but there is some pretty elastic at the neckline that was thrifted as well.

To decorate the top, I cut a circle from the plain cord and sewed it on roughly (as a frayed edge applique) and then I made a yoyo from the floral cord (the one on the top layer of the skirt) and sewed it onto the pink circle with a big pink button on top. My new coverstitch machine (Janome CoverPro 1000CP) got a bit of a work out with the top and it performed beautifully. I am so happy that I bought it.

I got a whole lot of wonderful vintage buttons today - all of these for AU $9.00! There are some really lovely and interesting and old buttons in here. I was very pleased when I got them all out to have a look.

I also picked up a few new-to-me fabric lengths (chocolate, olive and white fleece) but I didn’t take photos of those. I know, you want to see another photo of those buttons:

In the photo above, you can see them mixed in with the ones already in my collection. That glass bowl was a thrifty find today too - $2.00.

In other news, I had a big klutzy fall today in the school carpark - I am stiff and sore in quite a few places and I have my left wrist bandaged up at the moment.

I forgot to tell you, dear readers, that last week I sold my doorstop old coverstitch machine (Brother 2340C) because quite frankly, we had never bonded.

I had fallen in love since the first time we met in the sewing forums online, but once I got her home, well… let’s just say things didn’t work out as planned. We had never gotten along despite my many attempts at reconciliation. To put it bluntly, she was very high maintenance. For a long time, I felt obliged to keep her around but with a heavy heart (and dollar signs in my eyes) I put her up for auction at ye olde eBay and had someone in Melbourne “Buy Her Now” within a day.

It wasn’t long before a younger, fitter model caught my eye - and she had to be mine.

So I have done a little practice sewing on her, read up on all the info I might need, and had some binders on the way. Today I thought I was ready to sew a tee with her. After all the alterations I did to Simplicity 4076 recently, I wanted to try it out in a more suitable fabric. I used a tshirting weight soft pink jersey and white rib binding at the neck and sleeves.

I somehow ended up cutting two front pieces (instead of one front piece on the fold) and I have no idea how that happened, but once I realised what I had done, I thought I had better do some topstitching (coverstitching) and call it a feature. I was very happy with how it turned out.

I also added a wide band at the bottom as a bit of an afterthought, but I am calling that a design feature as well! I have received some of the binders from the eBay guy but I am still waiting on a couple and the ones I have weren’t wide enough for what I wanted, so I applied the rib binding the usual way. First I sewed it on with my sewing machine and then wrapped it around the edge and then I used the coverstitch machine to topstitch it in place.

You might notice the blue lines on Pinny, above. After padding her out (tummy and bra) I added some tape lines to use as markers for my Centre Front (CF), Centre Back (CB), waistline, bust, hips and princess seams. I don’t remember where I read about this trick but it has been really useful for fitting and design.

I also did a little bit of refashioning for Emma today. She has a size 3 pair of jeans that are still in good condition and fit her well, except for being a bit too short now.

I bought this cute ruffle binding (with red ric rac, it killed me!) off eBay a while back and knew this was a perfect use for it. Emma loves these “new” fancy pants and she can’t wait to wear them tomorrow.

Quick and easy and we’ll get a bit more wear out of these now! More refashioning over here.